elsewhere

SPILLED MILK

19 March, 2000—Kuta, Bali—

They were a family on vacation, husband and wife, and three small children—three young girls in skin tight spandex shorts, their long blond hair already braided and beaded in local tourist style.  Apart from a sandy blue speedo, Dad wore nothing but a thin scowl so habitual it could have passed for no expression at all.  Despite the fact that the youngest of his daughters was climbing all over him, from lap to shoulders, he seemed confident that such antic energy called for no response.  That is, until she spilled her milk, really spilled it—drenching the table, splattering the floor, and moistening major parts of her parents.  Dad immediately lashed out to strike his daughter, restraining himself a split-second before impact.  He shouted, he picked the girl up roughly by the strap of something, and re-positioned her a few infinite paces from the rest of the family—while Mom, who’d not uttered a word, spent the next five minutes dabbing at her milk-splashed sandal with a napkin solicited imperiously from a shyly appalled waitress.  Those members of the kitchen staff who emerged to mop the milk from the floor at the feet of the family were the only ones who paid any attention to the unfortunate child whose facial expression had come to resemble that mask which promptly resettled upon the features of her father.  When all other eyes were averted, a fresh glass of milk was slipped onto the table within reach of the outcast—but it remained a gift untouched, a kindness unacknowledged.

SIVA'S NEW HOUSE

1 April, 2001—Petulu, Bali—

There is a new bungalow on the property, a traditional Timorese dwelling, shipped here in pieces and then reassembled in the garden several months ago—all this at great cost to the new eager owners of this persistently sleepy little hotel.  Already the paving stones beneath it are covered with a pale veil of sawdust, as the wood mites deep within its beams and floorboards set to work devouring it.  Back in New York I have learned that a long cold winter or a few moments in a microwave will deal with such voracious stowaways.  Neither of these is an option here in the jungle, and so the only other course of action is to continually feed their appetites, to build constantly, to replace.  Even tin and cinderblock, even plastics have their fierce adversaries in this climate.  Without due diligence, the entire island could be stripped clean of the man-made in a matter of decades—everything not consumed from within, overgrown from without.  The whole relentlessly creative drive of the island seems but a balancing mechanism, a tug-of-war between art and death, between construction and destruction—with lots of dancing inbetween.

THE DARK HALF

7 March, 1999—Kuta, Bali—

I swam for an hour beneath a sky half dark as death, half burning blue—then flinched, and fled at last for shelter, the dark half nipping at my heels all the way home.  And though I felt always only one step ahead of the storm, it seems I have outpaced it after all.  I‘m back in my room now, I’ve already showered all trace of sand and salt from my skin, and the only thing that has fallen from the sky are these shadows.  I settle down protected on my porch to face the threat of thunder in the distance, convinced that there’ll be violence yet—.

4:36 AM

4 October, 2009—Puri Asri, Petulu, Bali—

For René

8 March, 2000—Petulu, Bali—

Although my smoothly tiled porch is considerably less dramatic than the slopes of Etna on which Chateaubriand’s René is perched in perpetual romantic anguish—nevertheless I recognize the view. 

“A young man full of passion, sitting at the mouth of a volcano and weeping over mortal men whose dwellings he can barely distinguish far off below him—”

Mount Agung is quiet this morning, almost stealthy as it emerges from a bank of lavender cloud and a shadowplay of palm.  I am far from its fires which have been quiescent for some years now.  Nor am I young.  And if it is true that I am passion-filled, such ardors seem to have been at least temporarily eclipsed.  My heart is nowhere near my sleeve, my dick is in my pants, my eyes are dry—and my skull is on my shoulders, not in my hand.  Such incongruent details need to be dispensed with summarily if am to recalibrate the moment.  On the other hand, it can’t be denied that I am far from the ‘dwellings’ of ‘mortal men’.  I haven’t spoken with a soul in days.

Think of it this way. Fellow travelers, this René and I—yet total strangers—we pass one another on a road somewhere between Natchez and Singapore.  And that brief moment of tangency proves sufficient for the transfusion of certain images.  That is to say, we indulge in a moment of personal collage—which proves, once all is said and then said again, far larger than ourselves.  On these squares of paper, these pages we carry so many of, we sketch our maps under the sign of the Alembic, adding the mysterious symbols and colors—Gunung Agung, Etna, Petulu, even Pompeii if we like, even Camelot or Roanoke—with a smudge of gray pastel for distance and dwelling, with a blue for the heights, and with gold in the depths.  And then we tear our paper squares to bits, we let the pieces catch the breeze, and we vow to meet again someday, elsewhere. 

“Throughout my life, I have had before my eyes an immense creation whichI could barely discern, while a chasm yawned at my side.” 

That bottomless furnace has never seemed closer than it does tonight, when the violence of the thunder startles me awake—and in the darkness the world recedes further and further, as the booming voice of the storm shudders through me with true intimacy.

EDEN WITH PLUMBING

3 October, 2008—Petulu, Bali—

DISTANT FIGURE

24 April, 2001—Kuta, Bali—

He’s left his sons ashore countless times—cresting the beachfront breakers in his outrigger, then paddling out to the fringe of surf that marks the shallows of the distant reef.  Yet for me it is happening for the first time.  At the water’s edge the youngest boys are naked and splashing, trawling tide pools with a rag of a net, chasing the shadows of shrimp.  A little further out, two older boys are swimming with a dog.  Another has abandoned his bicycle in the sand and is crouched at the end of the jetty on a pile of slippery stones.  There is no wind, yet I can feel it in his hair.  What he sees is a father gather shellfish, racing the incoming tide.  But what I see is a father walking on distant waters, leaning like a blind man on the long tilting pole he leads with—his empty boat behind him, anchored on the swell. 

I find myself looking down at my feet as I turn to leave.  They seem to be planted firmly on this stretch of sand littered with discarded shoreside offerings to the gods—a colorful confetti of torn petals and saffron rice kaleidoscoped anew by each receding wave.  I feel suddenly as if it is I that am being watched.  I raise my head in the direction of the walker on the water, but a shout from ashore distracts me.  A sun-bronzed boy in his underwear, soaked to the skin, has kicked his soccer ball in my direction.  He dares me with youthful bravado, then just shrugs as I decline to return his serve, and goes on playing exuberant solitaire.   Should he glance up now and again, he will see my figure grow smaller and smaller in the distance.  By the time father has rejoined all of his many sons on shore, I will have vanished completely.

(for Robert Stevens Hill)

CHEMICAL EXPERIMENT #36

NEW YEAR

1 January, 2012—New York City—

SHIP OF LIFE

9 October, 2011—San Francisco, California—